1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the processing of data and, more particularly, to methods and apparatus for combining or otherwise manipulating a plurality of streams of data.
2. History of the Prior Art
The typical computer system sends each word of data to a particular address unique to that word. The word (or less) of data may be combined with another word or otherwise manipulated depending on the instruction for the particular operation.
The necessity of dealing with the addressing and manipulation of each word requires a good deal of the time involved in computer operations. In order to increase the speed of operation of computers, arrangements have been devised which transfer large numbers of words together in blocks. These arrangements allow a computer system to address all of the large number of words as a stream of data to be sent to an address at a destination. At the destination, the information is typically transferred to sequential addresses. These arrangements speed the operations of computers by which data is transferred.
However, even though the transfer of the data in blocks or streams has been substantially accelerated, if the data is to be manipulated in some manner such as by combining it with data from other streams of data, that operation still has to be accomplished on a word by word basis once the data arrives at its destination. The simple transfer of the data in streams would be substantially enhanced for many purposes were there an ability to combine in various ways a plurality of streams of data to produce single streams where in stream form. In this way, the individual operations required to manipulate words of data and combine those with other words of data could be bypassed in many instances.
For example, where a first stream of data describes a particular picture which is to be displayed on the output of a display device, and a second stream of data describes a second picture which is to be displayed on the output of the same display device at the same time, it would be very useful if the pixel data in the two streams could be combined in a single operation while still in the two streams rather than in single word manipulations at the destination. Combining data while in streams would help accelerate various computer operations and be useful where operations need to be accomplished in real time. Combining data while in streams would allow the manipulation of data to occur rapidly enough to handle real time operations.